THERE'S NOTHING like a good caper film to keep an audience on the edge of their seats. The build-up of tension during the planning process, the nail-biting suspense as the crime goes down, the knowledge that somewhere, somehow, something is bound to go wrong - crime can make for great movies.

"Where the Money Is," the new movie starring Paul Newman and Linda Fiorentino, is, unfortunately, nothing like a good caper film. Even with a great cast and a great story idea, the movie fails to build even a hint of suspense. It just kind of sits there on the screen, and what should be a brisk 88 minutes seems more like 188 minutes. The dialogue falls flat and director Marek Kanievska ("Another Country," "Less Than Zero") can't draw any milk out of this turnip.

The story, credited to E. Max Frye, seems solid enough. Newman plays an aging, perhaps even aged, bankrobber named Henry who has figured out that if he can make like a stroke victim, he can get transferred from prison to a nursing home. All right, so we'll all pretend not to be aware that in real life, the guards would just toss scrambled eggs into his cell and see if he could lap them up - this is the movies!

Newman wants out of the joint because he's got a pile of loot stashed and most of the nurses caring for the infirm and elderly don't carry automatic weapons - although their union is currently negotiating for the right.

All is going smoothly until one of the nurses, played by Fiorentino, suspects that the new arrival might be a little more ambulatory than he is letting on. Bored with her job and her high-school-sweetheart husband, played by a buffed out Dermot Mulroney, the nurse figures if she can get Newman up and around, they can all go steal something together and make a ton of money and get out of their dull little town and their dull little lives.

The film was shot in Canada, but there's no mention of the fact that if they are stealing Canadian money, they are going to have to steal way more of it because those frostback dollars are barely worth the paper they're printed on.

It goes without saying that Newman is indeed recruited, since they are not about to pay one of Hollywood's last true movie stars to sit in a chair and drool all day - at least not Newman, not while Bob Hope still has his Guild card. The trio embarks on an armored car robbery and still, they might as well be strolling through a Jackson Pollock exhibit for all the snores that ensue.

So, a quick perusal of the movie notes nails the problem posthaste. Number one, three screenwriters are listed, the first being the aforementioned Frye. The bio information on the other two, Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright, proudly mentions their previous, uncredited, production rewrites.

Frye's bio, however, says only that he "was born and raised in the Beaver State."

Cut off my legs and call me Shorty, but that reads a lot like the producers (including "Blade Runners" director Ridley Scott) told Frye to take a walk, he told them to take his name off the turkey, they stuck him with a line about living in the Beaver State, the other two hacks came in and the finished product makes Paul Newman long for the days when he was cramming hardboiled eggs down his throat or giving that skinny actress a ride on his handlebars.

Truth be told, "Where the Money Is" is not without it's saving graces. If you haven't taken your mother to a movie in a while, this is the ticket, with its PG-13 rating, lack of violence and like that.